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We will continue to post information here about relevant news events or matters specific to the Campaign. 

After a successful soft launch of the Campaign we have taken time over the break to consider how to increase its potential effectiveness. 

We have inserted the following into our planned campaign actions:
'Give support to existing MPs and prospective MPs who are focussed on meeting our aims, regardless of the mainstream party they represent.
Whilst it is not currently our favoured approach we reserve the option to create a political party that does focus on fiscal responsibility if the existing parties and MPs fail to provide the necessary strength, vision, courage and leadership in this respect'.
Why?
1. We need the existing MP's to know that being fiscally responsible is a vote winner. The labour back bench rebellion against very modest welfare cuts last year suggests that those MPs did not believe that their constituents wanted this prudence. We need to convince them individually that we want them to consider the bigger fiscal picture.
2. At this stage it doesn't matter which party any MP represents in terms of them being fiscally responsible. We remain neutral with respect to any party - the important thing is to drive forward with sound economic policies.
3. We believe that that the option of creating a focussed new political party will initially be dismissed. There are numerous political parties in existence and it is not easy to start one and to give it traction (ask Jeremy Corbyn). However we are living through a period of political chaos, both in the UK and abroad with voters often denied any calm, serious, responsible party option to vote for. Populist parties and extreme parties are on the rise, some of which will fail to stand up to detailed scrutiny or will be considered to be too extreme to be a viable option.
4. The party most likely historically to provide a fiscally responsible option was the Conservative Party. They currently have a very long journey back to being the force that they once were. It may take voters a long time to forget their self inflicted chaos and the way that they allowed the public finances to deteriorate. A credible alternative without the baggage may be what the country needs. 

There are other reasons but based on the above please could you give us feedback on your thoughts - good, bad or indifferent (as ever please continue to be polite). 

Thank you.

01/01/2026

Another day another UK Government fiscal U turn. 

Today the Government announced that it is going to increase the Agricultural Property Relief inheritance tax threshold from £1 million to £2.5 million. The £1 million threshold was announced in the 2024 Autumn Budget and was due to be implemented in April 2026. 

There are many issues associated with the original announcement, not least the stress and anxiety it caused, the expense of farmers having to take financial advice and make decisions to help mitigate the effect of the tax, the slow down in business investment that resulted alongside the impact on their supply chains, the ill-health, the cost of trying to get the Government to see sense, the cost of policing demonstrations - the list goes on. 

Regardless of whether you think that the tax was/is worth it two things are beyond dispute:
1. Together with the other U turns and the bad fiscal decisions the Government is making it makes us, the UK, look fiscally totally incompetent. We need people around the world who want to invest in UK and do business with us to be confident that the Government knows what it is doing - but clearly it doesn't.
2. Political dogma is driving too many fiscal decisions rather than even basic maths. We have had the winter fuel allowance debacle. It is hard not to work out that this was an attack on a group of people less likely to vote for the current governing party. Taking a swipe at most farmers similarly made no fiscal sense - but again not a group likely to vote for them if there was any alternative. There may well be merit in asking the large estates to contribute some inheritance tax but just a few hours with a calculator would have enabled them to work out where the threshold should be. 

Whilst it isn't a fiscal matter it is noticeable that whilst people have spent over a year trying to ensure that the Government truly understands the implications of their 2024 APR decision, with only one small concession being made in the recent budget, the row-back is announced the day before Christmas Eve when many people are on holiday and have other things on their mind.

23/12/2025

The interview with Andrew Bailey, the Governor of the Bank of England on BBC Radio 4's Today programme this morning was quite interesting. 

He was asked 'at what point UK's national debt becomes unsustainable?'

His response was mostly a bit of a swerve as you might expect but he expressed the view that there are at least three very big headwinds running against us. These were:
1. An aging population. This impacts on the supply of labour and areas of spending.
2. The loss of the post Cold War dividend in defence spending.
3. The choices we make to tackle climate change.

His concern was that just one of these would be a worry but we actually have all three.
He pointed out the importance of explaining these issues then working out as a country how we tackle them.
He was again asked at what point the increasing debt becomes an economic problem. His response was to point out the need to increase the growth rate of the economy and to have the conversations regarding how to deal with the structural headwinds he just referred to. He pointed to the need to have the right mix of policies, the right role for the public sector and the right role for the private sector. 

This isn't a transcript but we believe it fairly reflects this part of the interview. 

What are our thoughts? 

1. He listed three of the headwinds. We keep referring to them as risk factors and there aren't just three - they are numerous. If he is concerned about the three it is understandable why we are very concerned about these plus all the others.
2. He pointed to the need to have some honest conversations regarding dealing with the headwinds. We absolutely agree and the Campaign is trying to promote those conversations in an unbiased way. The same has to happen regarding the mix of policies and the right roles for the public and private sectors. This is what we are trying to achieve.
3. In one of our recent posts we had a pre-budget wish list. One item was to quickly increase our defence spending, in part by transferring money away from the welfare budget. Our wish was not granted but it soon will have to be - like it or not.
4. He didn't directly answer the question regarding how much public sector debt is too much. We passed that point a long time ago and we are sure he knows that when the time comes he will be turning on his money printing computer which will have various consequences.
5. Completely unpopular as it may seem when we have an aging population as we do and will continue to have for some time we have to face the fact that the triple lock is financially unsustainable. It isn't free. When the money printing starts the value of the pension will be hit anyway so why bring that day forward.

19/12/2025

The UK's Covid Counter Fraud Commissioner has just published the final version of his report 'Pursuing Recoveries and Preventing Reoccurrence'.
One of the key statements is 'Of the estimated £10.9 billion lost to fraud and error from COVID-19 spending, £1.8 billion has been recovered. Much of the shortfall is now beyond recovery, but areas remain where investing in recovering money paid out incorrectly is worthwhile and work should continue'.

The report identifies various lessons learned, the first one of which states: 'Lesson One: The COVID-19 experience demonstrates that fraud prevention is insufficiently embedded in thinking and practice across government and, consequently...'.

Much of the report makes for uncomfortable reading but isn't entirely surprising.

There are various way to look at this: The potential loss is the equivalent to more than a 1p increase in basic rate income tax. The lost money may be considered to be in proportion to the scale of support needed (not our position though). Pursuit of perfection may have cost more. 

We are very concerned about the comment regarding fraud prevention being insufficiently embedded.... across government. Failures like this are easy when it is not your money and there are no penalties. This is a common theme associated with various recent governments - a failure to get on top of fraud. 

One of the defences that governments present is that they didn't expect and therefore prepare for a pandemic of this nature. This is complete nonsense.
The Cabinet Office published the '2019 National Security Risk Assessment' before the pandemic. It assessed the key risks that could potentially damage the safety or security of the UK or our interests both domestically and overseas.
It identifies 'Influenza-type pandemic remains the most severe non-malicious risk in the NSRA, with the potential to cause catastrophic impacts across a wide range of sectors, hundreds of thousands of fatalities and millions of casualties'. The associated risk table identifies it with the highest level of impact - catastrophic, with a likelihood of 3 on a scale where 5 is the maximum. In practice for the purpose of preparedness Covid and Influenza are sufficiently alike. 

So it is clear that we should have been prepared. There is no basis for their excuses. Had we been better prepared we would have had better measures in place to prevent many of the negative aspects of the pandemic, including this level of fraud.

09/12/2025

This morning we see that the government is planning to support young people on benefits get jobs in industries such as the construction and hospitality sectors. It plans to fund 350,000 training and work experience placements and will guarantee 55,000 jobs in areas where it considers there is the highest need.
There are other initiatives to help get young people off benefits and into work, including the use of 'employment coaches'. The government had previously announced plans to guarantee work placements for 18 - 21 year olds who had been out of work or education for longer than 18 months - with the possibility of benefits being cut if they do not engage without good reason.

On the face of it this is positive. 

The downside is that the cost of this comes out of the £820 million the chancellor set aside in the recent budget to help get young people off Universal Credit and into work. 

The question has to be asked - why is this necessary?

1. Because the state has created an environment whereby employing young people is a significant business risk. The imminent Employment Rights Act will positively discourage employers from taking on young people.
2. With the increases to the National Minimum Wage the costs of employing young people are about to rise again.
3. The whole business environment has taken various hits that discourage the entrepreneurs and business leaders who create the jobs that help draw people into work and hopefully in turn allow those workers to improve themselves and enhance their prospects. Taxes such as the Employers National Insurance increases and the APR/BPR changes act as a significant deterrent to job creation and employment.
This is in a strange way a degree of state control in that it extracts tax from employers, creates a negative issue then hands out that tax to try to undo some of the damage.

A better plan would be to leave employers to get on with it without the state interference and over regulation. What business needs is for the opportunity to find the potential young workers who they believe have the personal qualities and potential and to allow those employers to give the young person 'a chance'. If over the coming weeks and months it doesn't work out as planned for either party then make sure it is easy to part company. Then try again. It works - it has done for decades. 

Writing personally I have (many years ago when life was simpler) taken on a young person who wasn't fully qualified but clearly had the desire and motivation to give himself and his family a better life. He was given help with his training and education and did incredibly well, both for himself and the company. Eventually he outgrew the business and went on to even better things. 

The message to government has to be - stop meddling.

07/12/2025

We applaud the fact that the Chair of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), Richard Hughes has tonight resigned. 

Whilst his departure is related to the catastrophic early release of their report relating to the autumn budget we have been calling for resignations/sackings due to the OBR's poor forecasting performance. 

The report detailing the findings of the investigation into how the early release occurred confirmed that it was related to "configuration errors which reflected systemic issues". 

At the risk of making it too simplistic our interpretation is that the documents were loaded onto the relevant website in advance of the chancellors's budget statement so that all they had to do when she had finished speaking was to create the links etc. that then give ready access. When you create webpages that are not sensitive it would be quite acceptable in some circumstances to do that - it helps with the checking process - but definitely not if the information is sensitive. Their problem was compounded by the fact that the 'name' of the page was relatively easy to guess if you have the time and motivation (ie you do not need the link). The language in the investigation report is a bit more flowery but we think this is the broad situation.
One of the many concerning findings in the investigation report is the suggestion that there were 'pre-existing' issues that should have acted as a warning of the potential for this to happen. 

Hopefully the recommendations made in the report will be implemented and at least this component of the autumn budget debacle will not be repeated. 

The resignation of the Chair will go some way to demonstrating that failures by those who influence our fiscal position can have real personal implications.

01/12/2025

In our post on the 24th November we presented a 'wishlist' of broad actions we wanted the chancellor to adopt in yesterday's budget. Using the same item numbers we can comment as follows:

1. The budget was biased towards the left rather than focussing on doing what was right for the country. Examples being lifting the two-child benefit cap, increasing the national minimum wage, targeting 'the rich', avoiding any wholesale reform of the welfare system etc., attacking private rather than public sector pensions, continuing to attack landlords. That said, it could have been worse. 

2. There were some measures to encourage business and entrepreneurs such as business rates relief for retail, hospitality and leisure properties. There was some targeted investment spending announced. Also there are measures to encourage the employment of apprentices. However the national minimum wage increases, coming as the do alongside the Employment Rights Act is a significant downside measure as far as employers are concerned, particularly SMEs. It would be reasonable to assume that there will be fewer employment opportunities as a result. 

3. We wanted the chancellor to go big and bold. Whilst she did state that the measures she was taking would create a bigger fiscal headroom - eventually, the approach was neither big or bold. We wanted wholesale reforms, welfare budget saving with the money better allocated, an even bigger 'risk pot' to deal with the potential down side issues but it didn't happen. As part of this we wanted her to fire up the engine for growth. It also didn't happen and our growth and productivity prospects are pretty dire. 

4. We wanted more money to urgently be transferred into the defence budget. So far we haven't found any commitment that goes beyond previous announced small increases in defence spending relative to GDP. 

5. We wanted welfare spending to be significantly cut. Instead we got increases. Given that the money coming into Treasury coffers is quite healthy some of the tax increases that damage businesses could have been avoided by prioritising welfare spending cuts. Politically that is still too difficult (see item 1). 

Overall the budget felt like 'partisan tinkering' rather than incentivising us to work hard and 'do well'. It hasn't properly prepared us for future significant headwinds and if and when these do occur we will be back for yet another round of tax rises.

27/11/2025

On 19th September we posted suggesting that because of the poor forecasting by the OBR there should be resignations/sackings.
Given the embarrassing early release of their report before the budget yesterday it will be fascinating to see what actions they and the Treasury take. Our expectation is that they will role out the usual 'we have learned lessons' etc.
What the early release reveals is the lack of checks and balances. Whatever went wrong should have been intercepted. The cost would have been negligible. The reputational cost to the OBR is enormous.
Let's see how many resignations/sackings result.
Looking back over the last few months the way the possible budget measures have been leaked/briefed/speculated on has been a complete shambles that has cost the country. This is a situation that government really does need to learn lessons from and ensure that we never repeat.
The way this budget has been conducted has caused us reputational damage.

27/11/2025 

Whilst we have avoided discussing the measures that might (or might not) be announced in the upcoming budget, we do have a short 'wish list' of broad actions we would like the chancellor to adopt.
1. Make it a budget that is about meeting the needs of the country rather than satisfying the labour 'base'. If the polls are anything to go by the 'base' is a diminished entity anyway.
2. Make it truly about encouraging business, entrepreneurs, and those parts of society that contribute to paying tax and increasing productivity.
3. Go big and bold! We recognise that the 'black hole' is utter nonsense in the context of whether the chancellor is trying to plug one that is £20billion/ £30billion or whatever number they and the OBR want to agree on. The existing fiscal issues are far greater than that. More to the point, we are facing huge potential 'risk' issues - in a previous post we mentioned the WASPI women £10billion, but if as some commentators suggest we are on the verge of a financial downturn where is the war chest to help to get us through that? If it happened in the next 12 months the chancellor will be back for more tax.
4. Recognise that America is no longer a reliable defence ally and ensure that the resources are made available to rapidly increase our own defence capability. The 'Strategic Defence Review 2025' makes reference to resources being allocated 'when money is available'. Our adversaries are unlikely to wait. Either we get the money via this budget or from elsewhere (see item 5 below).
5. Do not add to our welfare obligations and budgets. Instead make deep cuts to welfare budgets based on ensuring those most in need are properly and respectfully looked after - and the rest are denied a free ride. The money this will free up needs in part to be transferred to the defence budget. Society has to make some hard choices - easy life or the ability to deter aggressors and defend ourselves.
Later in the week we will let you know how the chancellor has got on regarding accommodating each of the 5 items (we are not holding our breath).

24/11/2025

It is hard not to be cynical regarding some of the budget related issues that are being reported this morning. Recently Rachel Reeves has been preparing the ground for income tax to rise in the budget. Then overnight it is being reported that they have pulled back from increasing the basic rate. The implications of this being that they would have to pursue raising tax from other, more complicated sources.

Now however it is being reported that the amount she needs to raise has been reduced because the chancellor has received an improved forecast from the UK's budget watchdog. In the absence of a clear statement from the Treasury or ministers this may prove to be wide of the mark. However given that over recent days the PM has been dealing with questions over his own leadership a cynic might suggest that raising income tax, contrary to the Labour manifesto might not be a good career move for either the PM or the chancellor. 

What a complete fiscal farce. Our national finances are in a mess and yet the politics of buying a bit more time and saving their own positions are potentially going to take priority. What about the WASPI situation? They haven't decided whether to cave in and sign off the £10 billion of compensation. If they do where does this money come from? 

Painful as it may be this was the budget that needed to be bold to put us on the right path. There is still time for plenty more changes of direction before budget day but today it looks like a complete mess.

14/11/2025

According to figures released by the ONS this morning UK growth has effectively stalled.
Officially our growth was 0.1% in the 3 month period to September. The ONS also indicated that growth in September itself was -0.1%.
As ever these figures can be revised in due course but intuitively they are in the right order. They will be affected by the JLR shutdown but cyber attacks are a real ongoing issue that we cannot use as an excuse for poor figures.
Over the 3 month period if you look at the figures based on a 'per person' basis there was no growth at all.
What does this all mean?
First the good news - if you want lower interest rates there is an increased chance that this will happen sooner than later.
That's it for the good news.
The rest is just heartache and frustration. For a government that made chasing growth a high priority they are failing spectacularly. They have put in place measures that are anti business, anti growth and the chickens are coming home to roost. There is no likelihood of this changing anytime soon. You will be familiar with some of these measures - increasing employer national insurance, high energy costs, employment rights changes but very significantly they have created an environment whereby there is a lack of confidence for businesses and individuals to do things. So many business owners that we speak to just dare not expand, take on employees or invest even though doing so is what they would normally do. The mindset of many is to just try to ride out the storm. There are exceptions but this is the broad view.
Changing PM or Chancellor is not the answer if the overall Government approach is to continue on this path and we need to get away from such distractions.

13/11/2025

The latest UK employment/unemployment data has been released today by the ONS.
There are concerns regarding the quality of data obtained by the ONS for them to produce their reports so any conclusions should bear that in mind.
However in summary the director of economic statistics for the ONS is being quoted as saying: "Taken together, these figures point to a weakening labour market".
In the three months to September 2025 the UK unemployment rate has increased to 5%. We understand this is the highest rate since the period covering December 2020 to February 2021.
In broad terms the number of job vacancies remains unchanged.
What is concerning is that early estimates suggest that the number of people on company payrolls fell by 180,000 in the year to October, a drop of 0.6%.
This latter statistic is of significant concern to us. We need our businesses to be encouraged and to thrive, providing opportunities to create employment, to lift people up in terms of their finances and ultimately for both parties to pay tax. Nearly everything the Chancellor has done so far is to discourage businesses (typically through NIC increases, IHT changes, changes to employment legislation etc.). She then tries to tax us more to help to compensate for her and her predecessors' fiscal incompetence. There needs to be a complete change of approach. Stop the partisan tax and spend meddling, encourage businesses by real actions not words and in turn provide the business and employment opportunities that will generate the tax revenue.

11/11/2025 

We have previously expressed concern about the way the Government, and more specifically the Chancellor have totally moved away from the broad concept of pre-budget purdah and have created an environment where we try to mitigate against possible Autumn Budget measures based on 'rumours'. 

Financial institutions are reporting more people taking their private pension lump sums, the Guardian is this morning reporting that 'Investors pull cash from stock market at record pace ahead of Budget', earlier this week we had Rachel Reeves dropping the biggest possible hint that changes to the two child benefit cap is a possibility and it would be hard not to conclude that they are at the very least considering raising income tax. As a consequence some of us will make wrong decisions regarding our finances. It is like a reverse 'FOMO' (fear of missing out). 

There is no need for all this. We have have had weeks if not months of it. They are no doubt trying to put us in a position that if income tax goes up by 1 pence we are happier because we thought it might have been 2. What a way to treat people and create economic damage. We find this to be completely unacceptable.

11/11/2025

One of the many fiscal issues that we have is the impact of poor health in relation to employment. 

Employers face an estimated £85 billion a year in lost output and costs linked to ill-health. For government, the additional burden in welfare payments and NHS demand is around £47 billion annually. On top of this lies the wider cost to the economy of lower participation, and the human and social costs of lost opportunity, stalled careers, and reduced life chances.

The government commissioned the 'Keep Britain Working Review' lead by Sir Charlie Mayfield. Their report has just been published. A brief extract is below:'Individuals face life-changing financial and social costs. A 22-year-old who falls out of work for health reasons could be more than £1 million worse off over the course of their lifetime than if they had been sustained in employment; and the impact on wellbeing of being out of work is immense.Employers lose on average £120 per day in profit from sickness absences, which are at a 15-year high and face costs to replace staff which stretch into the tens of thousands each time. This causes disruption, lost capacity and unplanned costsThe state faces an unsustainable cost from economic inactivity due to ill-health of £212 billion per year, equivalent to 7% of GDP or nearly 70% of the income tax we pay, through lost output, increased welfare payments and additional burdens on the NHS'.

The report is comprehensive and is positive in that it highlights the good practice of some employers and sets out actions to try to address the issues as quickly and efficiently as possible. When our national productivity is being downgraded, as it just has been the issue of ill-health is a factor. So, rather than just demand more tax from us here is one of many opportunities to get back on track by helping people into the workplace with all the fiscal, personal and productivity benefits that will be derived. With more people in the workforce the case for high levels of immigration is very much weakened. 

Hopefully we will soon be able to comment on the government's response to the report.

7/11/2025

What are your thoughts regarding Rachel Reeves' speech this morning?
To be positive we have been encouraging the Government to be more open with us regarding fiscal issues so the fact that they did arrange this was good.
However what did we learn? Really not much. There was confirmation that the budget will result in us taking some more financial pain - but we rather knew that anyway.
Her reasons for giving us the pain were allocated to numerous events though to be fair she did hold back on allocating some blame to the outcome of the Battle of Hastings. Not much blame seemed to be laid at the door of the current Government.
What they will not address is the issue of RISK. There are lots of fiscal related risks and they all need to be managed. She made reference to the effect of tariffs, high inflation, increasing cost of borrowing etc. These are all easily identified risks. You could at this stage go on to consider the cost of cyber attacks, weather events, defence issues etc. They all need to have a sum of money assigned to them based on the potential cost and the likelihood of them occurring. But they seem not to do so, instead using these events as the excuse for the next round of tax raising measures to be blamed on someone else.
The OBR's productivity assessment downgrade isn't a good reason for potentially raising taxes. The productivity issues have been there for a long time and are in part of the Government's making. This was another risk element that should have been allowed for anyway - otherwise you make the assumption that the OBR is always right, which they themselves state isn't the case.
The fact that she didn't give anything away regarding the content of the budget was no surprise. As we have mentioned previously allowing all this speculation to take place is deeply damaging.
What we would have preferred is a clear statement about all the actions that are being taken to cut public sector expenditure (welfare, etc), improve efficiency, what lessons they have learned regarding properly managing the finances and how the budget will focus on encouraging our wealth creators, businesses, innovators and workers at the expense of those who play the welfare system.
A missed opportunity.

If you have any comments please use the contact form. 

4/11/2025

Another day and yet another report of poor UK fiscal management.
This time it is a report prepared by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) regarding our F-35 military aircraft programme.
The report identifies increased costs due to attempts to make short term savings, operational issues and staff recruitment and retention problems.
It states: 'A root cause of the problems is that over many years the Department has adversely affected capability and value for money through its narrow and short-term approach to management and cost involving imposing delays and cuts to save money in-year. It has also failed to realistically appraise
the programme's whole-life cost. This year the Department more than tripled its previous estimate to almost £57 billion only because of the NAO audit'.
Evidently this new estimate does not include some non-equipment costs such as those relating to fuel, personnel and infrastructure which the NAO estimate would take the cost to £71 billion.
One of the report's findings states: 'Furthermore, aircraft availability is poor. The UK F-35 fleet achieved approximately one-third of the MoD target for the time it was able to fly all its required missions in 2024, and achieved only two-fifths of the level of availability of the global F-35B fleet between October 2024 and January 2025'.
The report identifies a significant shortage of trained personnel across a range of occupations to ensure the planes can operate. How can this happen? We invest in a fleet of state of the art planes but cannot develop the people we need to run the programme. We have amazing educational establishments, fantastic individuals but still cannot piece this together.
Our concern is not that we have elected to secure an advanced fighter jet capability, it is in the inefficient way that the programme is being operated and the poor outcomes that are being achieved.

02/11/2025

Yesterday the UK Home Affairs Committee published its report 'The Home Office's management of asylum accommodation'. It identifies how billions of pounds of our money has been squandered by Home Office mismanagement. To anyone concerned about immigration and the cost of processing and dealing with those who enter the asylum system this is a double kick in the teeth.
It is a very comprehensive report which covers a range of issues but below are just a few extracts:
'Over the past six years, the Home Office has presided over an increasingly expensive asylum accommodation system. The expected cost of the Home Office's asylum accommodation contracts for the ten years between 2019–29 has more than tripled, from £4.5 billion to £15.3 billion'
'The Home Office has become heavily reliant on the costly use of hotels for asylum accommodation—which are unpopular with local communities and largely unsuitable for accommodating asylum seekers. It has used large scale contracts with private providers to deliver asylum accommodation, but these contracts have provided few levers to control costs and ensure that providers are delivering the accommodation required'.
'The Home Office seems to have neglected the day-to-day management of these contracts, failing to protect value for money for the taxpayer. Two accommodation providers owe millions to the Home Office in excess profits, but the Home
Office only appears to have started the process for recouping these profits in 2024 and has yet to reclaim these profits from providers. This money should be supporting the delivery of public services, not sitting in the bank accounts of private businesses'.
This is just another example of where successive governments have failed to manage their activities and budgets properly and now we are on the verge of the Chancellor coming back to us to say that she needs more money off us. These people collectively have no sense of shame. We just get the trotted out response of 'we have learned lessons'. Sorry, you won't and this is just not acceptable. Who has resigned over this?

28/10/2025

Some things don't change. 

Whilst we push for the Government to own it and sort it as far as our fiscal situation is concerned Rachel Reeves is harping on about austerity, Brexit, and the ongoing impact of Liz Truss's mini-budget having weighed heavily on the UK economy. 

Move on. If you want to dwell on the past we can set aside an hour or two to outline the damage that you have caused in just the last 16 months.

15/10/2025

In our last post we said we would explain who the 'we' is in terms of who needs to steer the runaway fiscal coach away from the cliff edge.
The 'we' is all of us who have been given the right to vote for our politicians.
Currently politicians believe that tackling the fiscal issues (by that we mean the whole picture, not just a few selected areas) is likely to be hugely politically unpopular.
We need to convince them that we want them to produce a credible and effective plan and then ensure that we support them in delivering this. The turning point is when they see that to do so is a vote winner not loser.
It is interesting that in recent days Warren Buffett (chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway who is a highly successful investor) has indicated the same in the context of the US fiscal issues. In the US there was a view that by voting for Trump the voters were going to get public sector spending cuts and an improved fiscal position. The reality having passed the 'Big Beautiful Bill' is a likely increase in their National Debt over the coming years (but this is complicated by the effect of tariffs). This highlights the trust issues that are a major risk factor.
So, somehow the task is to start pushing our existing politicians to take fiscal decisions that will benefit us in the longer term. One way to provide encouragement and focus is for another party to make this its core objective and to test its popularity in terms of polls. Equally just exposing the idea to polling may be effective. If the current Government sees evidence that it is what we want they are better motivated to change direction.
So is it what we want? The 'do nothing' options means that we are exposed to economic pain, the timing, size, implications and remedies will be outside of our control.

14/10/2025

You are probably aware that the campaign is non-partisan. Some people do promote one party or another in the comments and whilst these are generally moderated out we do from time to time leave some in - just because it is a reflection of how you feel.

The reason for being non-partisan is because when you have a coach with failed brakes heading for a cliff changing drivers who will simply continue to promise to press on the brakes just doesn't work. You need someone who will grab hold of the steering wheel and not just turn it way from the cliff but press on the accelerator to get the coach to the top of the next hill (don't ask us what happens next but you can see what we are saying). 

Changing the party in power will not result in the tough changes that we require. In part the evidence for this is in our previous post regarding the (depressing) party conference season. They are all tinkering.

There is a lesson to be learnt from Reform's success in the local elections. Some may have been led to believe that they would get a grip on local government finances, cutting waste etc. It is today being reported that 8 of the Reform led councils are struggling to cut spending and are considering raising council tax. 

We need to steer the coach and not rely on repeated changes of driver (which is what has happened in the past).

We will explain who the 'we' is shortly.

11/10/2025

Whilst the campaign tries to be positive there is only one word that can be used to summarise the position regarding the political party conference season so far - depressing. 

Why? None of the parties has shown any serious intent to really get stuck into dealing with our fiscal issues. There has been a bit of noise but no substance. This was a chance for the Conservatives to be, well, conservative. They took a step towards that but nothing like the giant stride that is required. They indicated that the shadow cabinet had identified £47 billion in savings with half going towards 'reducing Labour's deficit' whilst the rest went to unleashing the economy. They promoted other measures including abolishing stamp duty and rowing back on some of the net zero policies and taxes. Whilst they were being more supportive of the British economy and business there was little to really give hope that if they were elected they could turn things around. In reality time and events before the next election will probably beat them.

Then there was the Greens - supporting immigration and proposing to abolish private landlords. Next..

Labour. Lots of talk but again no substance. Indicating that they wanted the economy to grow not just from the top but from the grass roots. Our comment would be then why put so many measures in place that actually deter this - such as Employers National Insurance and workers rights changes. So many entrepreneurs are currently being discouraged. Kier Starmer made a statement in his speech that 'Because a Labour Party that cannot control spending is a Labour Party that cannot govern in our times'. We suspect that that is one that will bite him. 

As for the Liberal Democrats.. It is really difficult to find anything that was remotely fiscally positive, they were constantly looking over their shoulders at Messrs Farage and Trump. Move on. 

Reform. They focussed on stopping the small boats, making serious cuts to the welfare budget, scrapping 'harmful, wasteful net zero policies', reindustrialising Britain, ending full subsidies on renewable energy and they recognised that they needed to do work to be ready for an early General Election. All these are arguably laudable but at this stage there is understandably no detail regarding how these would be achieved and, as they say, the devil is in the detail. 

So whilst other parties have yet to have their conferences you may be able to see why so far it has all been a bit depressing.

09/10/2025

Should the Government break its manifesto commitments not to increase income tax, national insurance and vat? As a reminder what they said was: 'We will ensure taxes on working people are kept as low as possible. Labour will not increase taxes on working people, which is why we will not increase National Insurance, the basic, higher, or additional rates of Income Tax, or VAT.'
Given that the Chancellor has got a major fiscal shortfall to address (and in our view needs to tackle much wider fiscal issues that go way beyond what is perceived to be a £30 - £50 billion? initial shortfall) tapping into these funding sources is probably essential. There is talk about other sources of revenue but often they do not raise much tax or they discourage the business enterprise that underpins our economy.
Robert Peston whose political/economic opinions are widely heard commented on a recent podcast that effectively going against these commitments would be used by Reform against Labour all the way up to the next election. He did recognise that a crisis would potentially create a different background.
Is the view that going against the commitments would be political suicide - or are people just getting drawn into political group think? Looking at the polls neither Labour or Conservatives have anything to lose at the moment. Isn't the better thing for the politicians to come clean with us regarding the state of the finances - use some excuse if necessary such as the need for increased defence spending/cost of US tariffs/the need for increased resources to counter cyber attacks etc. and then just get on with doing what they really need to do regardless of the commitments? Our YouGov survey indicated that we want them to be open with us. When you look at some of the other fiscal commitments they are likely to miss them anyway.
It would be a gamble - and would have to be done alongside a clear plan to cut waste and inefficiency in the public sector but the chances are our borrowing costs would be eased and they might be rewarded for taking firm action and showing true leadership - which is currently lacking.
What are your thoughts?
As an aside - what were they thinking when they put those commitments into the Labour manifesto? On the back of years of Conservative self destruction they were shooting at an open goal. Why would you try to tie your hands like that!

27/09/25

Sorry for the relatively long last post regarding the NAO report. But it is important. 

The reason is that we are rapidly approaching a point where we are going to have to make some very difficult, uncomfortable and massively significant choices regarding our national finances. Typically with a recent commitment to increase our defence spending, more regular encroachments by foreign aircraft into NATO airspace and a need to bring more of our defence back 'in house' we are going to have to decide what our fiscal priorities really are. There are other massive financial risks that would overwhelm our finances and this post but we single out just this one. We are going to have to decide what we want. Do we increase welfare spending, allow inefficiencies and waste to go unchecked continue to make unaffordable public sector pay settlements etc. or do we defend ourselves? We cannot do all of them - successive Governments have failed to build a contingency fund and instead opted to create a debt mountain. 

No Government wants to have the conversation because in the very short term it isn't the popular thing to do. But look at what is happening in Europe - their failure to address the issue is causing social, political and financial upheaval which in no way will end well. 

The link back to the NAO report in the previous post is that Government must tackle its waste and inefficiency to make this difficult conversation a bit easier. 

20/09/25

The National Audit Office has just published a report entitled 'Improving Government's Productivity Through BetterCost Information'. 

At the risk of giving too much away for those of you who feel the need to read it, the highlights are that the report states that some Government departments have a limited understanding of the costs of individual services. Government expects to spend £450 billion annually on its operations, and yet some departments do not know the costs of individual services at a more granular level of detail, nor where excess costs arise from people having to work manually around cumbersome, old systems and poor-quality data from fragmented data sources.It states that the lack of cost information is a barrier to achieving Government's productivity aims.

Previous attempts to improve departmental cost information have suffered from inconsistencies in approach and lack of sustained focus on data infrastructure.The 'Top 75' programme led by the Central Digital & Data Office (now Government Digital Service) between 2022 and 2025 aimed to identify the costs in the 75 most used government services. A lack of sponsorship to improve data in departments and other public bodies limited its progress and the programme closed with only 29 of the top 75 services being assessed as 'great'. 

This highlights a recurring challenge: that without sustained effort, government will find it difficult to identify the basic data needed to understand what drives the cost of services and where money is being wasted so as to improve efficiency and productivity.

We will comment on this in the next post.

20/09/25

One issue that is developing that has a significant impact on our public sector finances is that of productivity growth both within the wider economy. The OBR has for some time taken what has turned out to be a rather optimistic view regarding our wider productivity growth. 

Whilst we try to focus on facts it is being reported in the media that the OBR are considering downgrading its estimate of likely productivity growth when it carries out its next review. A downgrade results in a significant adverse impact on our public sector finances. Intuitively it is hard to see any reason for any significant improvement in our productivity. 

We seem to be good at putting in place measures that adversely impact it and ride on the hope that AI is going to make rapid early productivity improvements possible.

20/09/25

Whilst we are pressing the political parties to be more open with us regarding the fiscal issues one area where we would like them and the media to frankly shut up is in relation to all the pre-budget speculation. The true cost of it will never be known but the uncertainty regarding whether or not stamp duty will be changed, pension tax allowances altered etc. all creates an environment where people do not know how or whether to act to mitigate against something that might not happen. 

An example is the fact that before the last fiscal event some people withdrew their 25% tax free money from their own pension funds only to find that the allowance was not affected and it was potentially the wrong thing to do. 

What makes things worse is the fact that it is a long wait until the Budget anyway. 

There used to be pre-budget purdah where it was a resignation matter if anything was leaked before the Budget announcement for fear of influencing the markets. Whilst the current situation isn't in relation to leaks - because decisions haven't yet been made it does create the instability. If the Government wants to test out any potential changes it can use its focus groups. What is the point of loading more uncertainty onto individuals, businesses and markets?

11/09/25

One of the fiscal issues that economists are flagging up at the moment is the increasing cost of the State Pension as we grow older and hopefully live a bit longer. In June 2025 the basic figures were:The expenditure on SP has increased from £123.9bn in FYE 2024 to £142.0bn in FYE 2025. That is an increase of £18.1bn in just one year. The overpayment rate was £190M in FYE ending 2025 and the underpayment rate was £450M. The fraud rate was zero. 

Unfortunately the spiralling cost of the state pension is an issue that we, society as a whole, need to address. To help get rid of the misinformation how much we might get in state pension is linked to how many years of National Insurance contributions we made. That money didn't get put in a pot ready for us to draw down - those contributions were used to pay other people's pensions at the time. Current pensions are being paid by current taxpayers. Unfortunately state pensioners don't have anything other than a moral contract to receive payment. The state pension was set up at a time when our life expectancy beyond retirement wasn't very long so the costs weren't particularly high. Now circumstances are much different. 

The issue is politically really difficult to address - so far the approach has been to raise the pension age - which means that generally younger generations are paying the state pension of current retirees with little prospect of getting much state pension themselves. 

The question is, is this really fair and is the responsible thing to do to abandon the triple lock? The triple lock means on average state pensions go up more in percentage terms than the wages of the people who are paying for them. 

Ultimately if our economy does go bang inflation is the likely result which means we are less likely to be able to afford the things we need. Other countries have failed to address this type of issue and as you can see in France has resulted in the social, political and economic upheaval the campaign really wants to avoid. 

We owe it to our kids and grandkids to ignore all the political issues and as a society have an honest debate.

11/09/25

Our Facebook page has attracted a lot of interest since it was launched only a few weeks ago. We have now have a page on 'X' @CampaignFiscal and will be working to grow that presence.

We have arranged a UK wide survey to establish people's position regarding two aspects of our public sector finances. A press notice is being prepared and we expect to publish the survey findings later this week

24/08/25